Montenegro set to tackle EU agenda, European Commission commends its efforts

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European Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule told the press after his meeting with Prime Minister Igor Luksic that the European Commission welcomes Montenegro's strong commitment and its determined and constructive approach in addressing the seven key priorities from the EC Opinion and other challenges Montenegro has to deal with on its integration path. He voiced the Commission readiness to support Montenegrin efforts through providing recommendations and advice, as well as through technical assistance.

The Commission also commends the recently adopted Action Plan for meeting the EC requirements, describing it primarily significant for being a result of a very inclusive process, Enlargement Commissioner underlined.

‘’Let me stress that the key word here is implementation. Implementation of reforms is essential for the credibility of the enlargement process. Montenegro should deliver concrete results on the key priorities, but it should also continue its reforms in other areas where shortcomings have been identified by the Commission’’, he said referring to the necessity of upgrading efforts to strengthen Montenegro’s administration and implementation capacity in a number of areas, which will, as he hopes, eventially result in Montenegro joining the EU family of nations.

Prime Minister Luksic reiterated the full commitment of the entire Montenegrin society to tackle all the challenging issues of the EU agenda in order to get to the final stage of the European integration - negotiation stage.

Montenegrin Government will, in his words, devote a lot of attention to improve the quality of public administration, to change its legislation with the aim of empowering the quality of judiciary and combat organised crime. Furthermore it is set to work hard in order to provide media freedom, introduce civil society into all segments of the county’s political life “making it one of the pillars in the overall European process”, and to advance the implementation of its anti-discrimination policy, the PM stressed.

The seven key priorities laid down in the Opinion inluclude: improvement of the legislative framework for elections, public administration reform, strenghtening rule of law, fight againt corruption, fight against organised crime, enhancing media freedom and implementation of anti-discrimination policy.

For the video of the joint press conference please click on the video link above.